HS Prannoy achieves career-best 10th spot in BWF rankings

Indian shuttler HS Prannoy has jumped to his career-best 10th position in the men’s singles badminton rankings, released on Thursday.

Prannoy moved up a place and attained 53,285 points in total, while his compatriot Kidambi Srikanth remained at the second place. However, B. Sai Praneeth (16th), Sameer Verma (21st) and Ajay Jayaram (23rd) have dropped a place each.

In the women’s singles, Olympic medallists P.V. Sindhu and Saina Nehwal were static at second and 11 spots respectively. In the men’s doubles, the young pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty dropped a place to be 28th, while experienced Manu Attri and B. Sumeeth Reddy remained at 33rd. In the women’s doubles, Ashwini Ponnappa and N. Sikki Reddy moved up a position to be 24th. The mixed doubles pair of Pranaav Jerry Chopra and Sikki moved a place down to 17th.

There haven’t been many happenings in the top half of either Men’s category or Women’s category. For the Women’s Double, however, Demark’s Kamilla Rytter Juhl and Christinna Pedersen have jumped a spot to third, surpassing China’s Chen Qingchen and Jia Yifan. The US Open champion Prannoy – who had achieved his then career-best 11th ranking last week – reached the semifinals at Indonesia Open and French Open this season and has been perfectly rewarded for that

Kidambi Srikanth, on the other hand, pulled out of the China Open which hampered his chances of becoming the World Number 1. The spot is still up for grabs should he decides to participate in the upcoming Hong Kong Open. There have been speculations that he might miss the tournament, while some claim he will mark his return. Nothing is decided to date.

Both Prannoy and Saina crashed out of China Open yesterday after losing their respective second round encounters in Shanghai. The former lost to the 53rd-ranked Cheuk Yiu Lee of China 21-19, 21-17, while the latter lost out to World’s number 4 Akane Yamaguchi of Japan 21-18, 21-11.